


Choke Point

by whimseyrhodes



Category: Leverage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-21
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-18 03:49:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13091805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whimseyrhodes/pseuds/whimseyrhodes
Summary: After the events in San Lorenzo, Eliot needs a break. But when Hardison's Nana shows up, all bets are off.





	Choke Point

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Valawenel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valawenel/gifts).



> Valawenel. Oi Vey. I can honestly say I totally freaked out when I was assigned to be her Secret Writer. Occam’s Razor seems to be one of THE go-to fics for Leverage (as is the whole Texas Mountain Laurel series), and to be tasked with writing a fic for THAT writer was….dizzying.
> 
> But, what the hell. Let’s do it. (Not sure I got the clever part, tho…. :/ )
> 
> With the prompts that were given, the scene that instantly came to mind was those in The Big Bang and San Lorenzo Jobs. The emotions between Nate and Eliot and the rest of the team were painfully obvious and angsty and deserved to be explored so much more than they were. Let’s face it, those scenes had SSSOOOOOO much unused potential, and I’m still surprised that the aftershocks of those jobs didn’t reverberate down through more episodes. 
> 
> A/N: This is a non-linear storyline and rated for Eliot’s potty mouth.
> 
> A/N2: Oh, and I got really into the military research for Eliot’s background, and I apologize for that. Some terms have popped up in the story, but there are definitions at the end.

“It’s a kill box. There’s too much space between here…and there.”

“The white hat really doesn’t suit you, but I love the hair.”

“Never said I couldn’t use ‘em.”

“It’s a kill box.”

“Tell me, whose Snoopy lunchbox do I have?”

“Reminds me of Belgrade.”

“It’s a kill box.”

“You said you didn’t like guns.”

“A kill box…”

“You work alone.”

“Kill box…..”

Eliot’s brain just wouldn’t shut up. He was running on nearly four days without sleep after the scene in the warehouse, yet his conscience just would not release him. The team had just left Moreau in the bowels of San Lorenzo, watched over by General Flores and President Vittorio, but that didn’t mean that the man wasn’t sitting here in the seat next to Eliot, taunting him.

“The white hat doesn’t suit you.”

Nate looked across the aisle at his hitter, his eyes narrowing as he saw Eliot scowl once more at nothing. They were all on the flight back to the states, with Parker, Hardison and Sophie all sleeping like the dead in their seats. Nate was stretched back in his, a glass of scotch in his hand as he reviewed what they had done. Obviously Eliot was also reviewing the events.

“Rest of the team, they don’t need to know what I did.” He could still hear Eliot’s raspy undertone as they walked through the hangar.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Nate had responded. He had a feeling that there were a lot of things that Eliot didn’t want the team to know about. He knew the documented details of quite a few of Eliot’s previous governmental ’assignments’, but he also knew that he hadn’t even scraped the surface of the private man. What documents he could find about Eliot had had an awful lot of blacked out and redacted information. Head of a pin, and all that.

Intellectually, of course he knew what had happened when he and the Italian had left the hitter. The details, sights and sounds would be forever sealed in Eliot’s brain alone, but Nate had heard the gunshots and the last explosion as he and the Italian sped away. Flames licking at the back of the warehouse in the rearview mirror made him struggle with himself, worry for the hitter foremost in his brain and nearly swamping the need to finish the job.

From his beginnings in the Army, Nate had seen a young man eager and chomping at the bit to defend his country. Through his Ranger, Special Operations, and finally Airborne training, that young pup had grown into one of the most dangerous men on the planet, and as Nate read file after file, he’d seen Eliot’s innocence gradually eroded away and replaced with a cold, unfeeling pragmatism. When he’d split off from the Army, he’d been able to take all that Uncle Sam had taught him and use it with a deadly efficiency.

Surprisingly, somehow, Eliot had managed to hold on to his sense of loyalty and charm. Nate suspected that charm had gone a long way in the making of Eliot’s reputation, with him being able to draw in his targets until it was too late to run. His loyalty to the Army had shattered, and once in the clutches of Damien Moreau, he suspected that that sense of loyalty was what had locked him to the man’s side for so long.

Moreau. That was another layer of Eliot’s mask. When Hardison said that he’d worked for Moreau ‘back in the day’, Nate hadn’t known what to make of it. The hacker, still a little damp, (and what was that all about?) had been tightly wound and quietly furious until the mystery of the Ram’s Horn quickly distracted him.

Eliot though…. If the eyes were the window to a man’s soul, Nate saw the desolation of a man who’d already sold his soul to the devil and was well into serving his sentence.

When they’d first started working together, hell, when Nate had first _met_ Eliot Spencer, he’d thought of the Retrieval Specialist as just a cocky, over-confidant and sometimes brutal but simple, Southern brawler. He should have known that there was a shrewd brain behind that facade; after all, people quaked at the mere mention of his name and that wouldn’t have happened if Eliot had been anywhere near ‘simple’. Not to mention being able to walk away from Moreau with his life intact, something no one had managed to do before or since.

Now, after learning more and more about him over the years, he was constantly surprised at the depth of the man who never seemed to _stop_ surprising him. 

He had a feeling that Eliot was repeatedly surprising himself, as well. His relationships with the rest of the team had solidified them into one cohesive, seamless unit, and Nate wasn’t sure he’d have been able to bond such disparate personalities on his own. 

Eliot and Hardison were the two loudest and most obvious pairing, treating each other as the brother who always got under the others’ skin. Their perpetual bickering at each other broke tension and reaffirmed their friendship, but was always entertaining no matter whose side one was on. 

Eliot and Sophie were on a much more even keel, both being consummate professionals in their fields. While Sophie was occasionally able to sway the hitter to her charms, Eliot was normally too astute to be buffaloed by her. Nate could see that Sophie was curious and delighted with the challenge of puzzling through the layers that made up Eliot’s numerous walls. 

Then there was Parker. That girl was confusing on the best days, and her relationship with Eliot didn’t seem to even be termed ‘a relationship’. He was just there. He was her mentor, her big brother, her confidant, her whatever-he-needed-to-be at whatever moment she needed him. Granted, he was that for everyone, but for Parker it was something just a little more special. Because she’d had an obviously difficult childhood, or whatever passed for one, they all felt just a little more when it came to the blonde thief.

And that left himself. Thinking about Parker being an enigma was overshadowed by Eliot. He was, as the saying went, an enigma wrapped in a riddle, but Eliot had an extra helping of mystery. With a triple dipped catch-22 on top. And some perplexing sprinkles. And a puzzle cherry.

All of that made Nate think of one of the first things that the hitter had revealed: his love of food and cooking. When he’d brought out the spaghetti at the end of the Wedding Job, Nate had nearly melted with the deliciousness of it - and so had everyone else. And from then on, the man seemed to make it his business to keep them healthy and up to their armpits in well-balanced meals and the occasional hated vegetable all while making them seem like delicacies.

Eliot was also his sounding board, his devil’s advocate, and his mirror. With his shrewd mind he took apart every plan Nate made, making sure that the safety of the team, both physically and mentally, was covered, and wherever the holes in the plot were Eliot was there plugging them up. He thought of things in terms of defensive capabilities, peripherals and lines of drift. If he couldn’t figure out how to rip the plan into shreds, he was satisfied that no one else would.

The hitter also knew enough to leave the other jobs to their respective masters. Hacking and anything tech was Hardison’s domain, and woe be the one who tried to overstep him. If anything needed to go missing or be overheard and Hardison’s tech couldn’t be used, Parker was the obvious choice. And even though it had been hard to believe it at first, any grifting was now left firmly in Sophie’s hands with the confidence that she would pull it off.

Yes, Eliot was their shield, but he was also their glue and their sanity. Nate couldn’t count on both hands and feet the times he’d reined the mastermind in on some of his more hare-brained schemes. Most of those the rest of the team didn’t even know about. Since the first time Eliot had nudged a plan back on track Nate had taken to bouncing off his ideas when Eliot was otherwise preoccupied. When he was cooking was a great time to brainstorm because the hitter was in a relaxed and meticulous head space, able to catch onto loose threads and either pull them out or help Nate to weave them in.

But it looked like now some of those threads were weaving Eliot into a web of his own tension. 

“Snoopy lunchbox…”

“White hat…”

“Kill box…”

Eliot felt like a pissed off pit bull, wanting to snarl and snap at the voice but instead he closed his eyes and reached deep, pulling another layer of calm over his face. He could feel Nate’s gaze boring into his skull, even though he didn’t dignify it with a return glance. 

That Moreau could get under his skin wasn’t anything new to the hitter. For the last six months his anxiety had ratcheted up to brand new levels, and that was saying something. Eliot’s sleep had been nearly nonexistent and when it had come, it was full of old nightmares and newer, more horrific ones. Now, with Moreau as good as sitting on his shoulder again, he was afraid his temper would slip its’ leash way too easily.

Nate’s stare weighed on him more and more as each mile flew beneath them, and by the time the plane landed Eliot was nearly ready to toss the mastermind down the causeway just to watch him bounce.

Parker and Hardison saved the day for him again though, Parker waking up on a dime and practically leaping out of her seat, with a sleepy hacker being pulled along behind her. She seemed to have enough energy to last both of them for the next three weeks, and no one had even given her any chocolate. He’d made sure of it.

“Eliot!” He winced as she yelled his name. _“Elioteliotelioteliotelelelelel!!!”_ Damn but sometimes she was worse than a five year old. He couldn’t really blame her, he supposed, since she hadn’t had the best examples to follow as a child, but sometimes, like now, her enthusiasm was about to make his brain boil over.

“Comin’,” he growled, which seemed to make her happy enough as he lugged behind them all, a moving mountain of duffles and suitcases.

When the taxi van disgorged them at McRory’s an hour later, Eliot carried the luggage far enough to drop them just inside the bar before turning to Nate, who’d hung back as the others continued inside.

“Nate, man, I need some time.” Eliot’s normal husky drawl was heavier and rougher than normal, and the words sounded like they had been dragged reluctantly from his throat.

Nate had been expecting the request, even hoping for it. He nodded. “How much?” was all he asked.

“Dunno. Week or two,” the hitter admitted, shoving his hands into his pockets and looking down at his boots, and Nate could some pink tinging his cheeks.

“Well, I wasn’t planning on taking any more jobs for at least a couple of weeks; Sophie’s been nagging me to go to Paris with her again.” Nate sounded resigned. “I wanted to go to Tuscany.”

Eliot actually seemed to relax a little at the joke, glancing up from under his bangs. “Bet you lost.”

“Yup,” Nate said, the ‘p’ popping at the end. 

The hitter’s eyes became warm with understanding and he simply nodded, acknowledging the ‘release from his duties’.

“You know where you’re going to go?” Nate asked him, receiving a shrug in return.

“Nah. Just wherever the truck turns, I s’pose. Got no plans.”

“Well, keep your phone and comm, just in case; you know Hardison will drive us up one wall and down the other side if he can’t find you if he needs to.”

“Dammit, Hardison.” The gruffness was quiet and fond this time, and Nate’s lips lifted on one side as he opened the door, motioning Eliot in first.

When they stepped into the bar, however, all plans of vacations and time off fled their minds.

Hardison was sitting in a booth facing them, his arms around a small black woman with white hair who was leaning into him, sobbing into his shoulder. With the way the hacker was holding her closely and protectively, it was obvious that this was Hardison’s Nana. And the look on Hardison’s face said that she needed help.

It was also clear by the looks on everyone else’s faces, including Eliot’s, that this was one case that would not be refused by any of them, no matter what plans had just been made.

* * *

Nate remembered the conversation between Hardison’s Nana and the team as clearly as if it had only just happened, instead of over a week ago. But now, listening to a barely conscious hitter mumbling over the coms, he couldn’t regain the calm he’d had while planning. With Eliot bleeding and heavily concussed, all he could think about was that he needed to keep the man from ever having to go through that again. 

Sure, Eliot was their hitter and took the hits so they didn’t have to, as he was always telling them, and he was good at his job. But Nate was one who planned for the long con as well as the short, intricate ones. Eventually, and possibly sooner rather than later unless he managed to rein him in a little, Eliot wouldn’t be able to be their hitter anymore.

The culmination of past injuries to his shoulder had resulted in a permanent ache that Nate could see even when plans went smoothly and Eliot didn’t have anyone to hit. Whenever bad weather came in, the hitter’s famously minuscule temper became even shorter and Nate knew it was because of increasing aches in his repeatedly broken bones. The concussions were worrisome as well, even though there was no outward signs of problems. But every time Eliot came back wounded, either minorly or not, Nate made one more mental check in the box marked with Eliot’s nine lives, knowing that each one whittled away at the hitter’s longevity.

Nate knew that as hitters went, Eliot was at the top of the list, both in ability and, unfortunately, age. Part of that was his cunning and intelligence, part was his elusiveness, and part was his stubborn will and drive to stay strong. Nothing could be done about his age, though, and Eliot was one of the oldest living out there. Granted, many of the others had ended at the bark of a sniper’s rifle, and Nate had Hardison doing his level best to erase any hits taken out on Eliot as they popped up.

“Hang in there, Eliot,” he said softly, hearing a soft grunt in reply. “We’re going to get you out of there.”

* * *

“Nana, Nana,” Hardison said quietly, rubbing the old woman’s back. “Hey, they’re here. This is Nate, and the grumpy lookin’ one is Eliot.”

The woman pulled herself upright and released Hardison’s shirt, wiping at her eyes with a Kleenex. 

“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Mrs….?” Nate said, stepping up and holding out his hand. 

“You jes’ call me Nana, young man,” she said, standing up. “Alec’s tol’ me so much ‘bout you.” Before he knew it, the little woman had bypassed the proffered hand and wrapped the mastermind in a hug. Nate’s startled eyes went to Hardison, who had the grace to look chagrined.

“An’ Eliot.” Her voice warmed as she stepped back and looked over at the hitter.

“Ma’am.” He accepted the squish gracefully, bending over a little so he didn’t tower over her. She smiled at his ‘Southern Charm’ and patted him on the back before letting him go and surveying the group.

“My boy tol’ me all about you, you takin’ him in and givin’ him a place ’n all.”

Hardison piped up then, obviously a tad embarrassed with the attention she aimed at him. “Nana needs our help,” he said, getting to the heart of the problem surprisingly quickly. “Bethany, one’a my foster sisters, she’s got in a bit of a bind and Nana…”

“Bit of a bind, my black ass!” the old woman snapped, her eyes flashing for a moment. Even Eliot looked taken aback, his brows rising under his hair. “That girl done gone against everythin’ I told her an’ hooked up with a no good, miserable, lazy, lyin’ damn druggie who ain’t had a decent bath inna’ month!”

Nate heard the nearly inaudible snort coming from beside him, and saw the hitter raise his hand to his mouth, covering it in a cough. Hardison glared at him.

“Nana called me a coupla days b’fore we went on our ‘trip’,” the hacker said, a slight emphasis on the last word. Obviously he hadn’t told, and wasn’t planning on telling, his Nana the specifics. “She said Bethany had run off, but I only just found out that she hasn’t been back home since, and that all of….whatshizname?” He looked at Nana with a question on his face.

“Marcus,” she returned, heat in her voice. “That damn Marcus.”

“Marcus’ friends are coverin’ for him, ain’t tellin’ her where they are at all. Now, I been doin’ a little lookin’,” he said, pulling out his ever-present tablet and tapping a few times. “An’ I can’t catch either o’ them on any monitors or cameras in the area, her bank account was wiped out the day Nana called me, and her car ain’t moved.”

* * *

Hardison was having a hard time reconciling the hard edged hitter with the mushy, charismatic Southern Gentleman who was currently charming the pants off of his Nana. Or skirt, Nana didn’t wear pants.

_Anyway_ ……

An open grin slid easily onto Eliot’s face as Nana went on a tangent and told him one of her many stories, the corners of his eyes wrinkling in mirth. Funny, Hardison had never noticed the man’s laugh lines, but they were there, right in front of his eyes, and looking at that happy face he wondered how Eliot always managed to look so pissed off all the time.

Then Hardison started to wonder about everything else that was in such conflict within his best friend. He wasn’t ashamed to call him that, either, not to himself. He had a feeling that if he said that to the hitter, though, he’d be swallowing teeth. But he’d wondered about the anomalies before: how Eliot seemed to terrify the bad guys with ease, and yet little kids and animals flocked to him for comfort. He sounded crankier than a hibernating bear with a toothache most of the time, but could sing with the husky voice of an angel. He would roll his eyes at Parker eating cereal or the hacker downing gummy bears and orange soda, and then turn around and whip up a feast out of nothing but the leftovers in his fridge.

Honestly, thought Hardison. It was like watching an episode of Chopped right in his very own kitchen.

The hacker knew he underestimated Eliot quite a bit. Even though he gave the hitter grief about not owning a TV, he had learned that Eliot was a lot more knowledgable than he let on. He might seem like just the hard hitting muscle, but that persona was one of the man’s many masks, and it let him grift his way into and out of many situations. He’d watched Eliot go from being a redneck alien hunter on one job to a suave, elegant gentleman on the next without breaking his stride.

* * *

What began for the team as a missing person’s case had quickly transformed into taking down a drug ring. Learning that Bethany had been lured in and forced to be one of their mules, they laid their covers carefully. Finally finding her by tracking down a few associates of Marcus, Hardison learned that she was coming back from a trip to Peru.

Eliot had sniffed out a few ex-Special Ops soldiers on a couple of his reconnaissance forays and now watched them following her through airport security and then to the curb, where a man picked her up in a battered looking Dodge Ram. 

Hardison had taken it from there, using the back-up tracker that Parker had slipped into Bethany’s shoe when she ‘accidentally’ ran into her and dropped her blue slushie all over the floor. In the guise of a bubble headed bleach blonde wiping it off Bethany’s shoes, she planted the bug.

With Parker and possibly Eliot’s faces seen, it then fell to Sophie to tail the pick up into town until a stoplight, and then Nate took over from there, following them to, again unsurprisingly, a warehouse district to get a visual on the situation. He turned left when the Ram went right, then heard the rumble of Eliot’s Ducati pass him.

_“Seriously guys,”_ Hardison sighed over the earbuds. _“What is it with warehouses for the bad guys? They get ‘em on a bulk discount or somethin’?”_

_“Yeah, Hardison, they get ‘em at a discount,”_ He could practically hear Eliot rolling his eyes just as Nana admonished, _“Alec, don’t distract Mr. Ford.”_

Followed by Parker’s giggle.

_“Okay, I count three ex-Rangers and maybe a Mossad agent,”_ Eliot said thoughtfully, his voice echoing oddly inside the full face helmet. _“Bethany’s out of the pick-up…she’s going into the biggest building on the left. I see four lookouts on that one, three on the adjacent. Seven total in the air, three more joining on the ground. Guys, this ain’t gonna be easy.”_

_“Easy is no fun,”_ Parker said.

* * *

“Negative, Eagle…Eight klicks north of BFR…” They heard the grumble over the coms, but for the last twenty minutes Eliot hadn’t been making much sense. He seemed to be jumping from scene to scene in his head, sometimes addressing ‘Eagle’, sometimes talking as if he were with his buddies in the Army, sometimes just swearing in multiple languages.

“Ah, FIDO.”

“What? Naw, naw, naw, man, not Fido. It’s Megabyte, man…. _Me-ga-byte,”_ Hardison corrected.

But Eliot made no further movement or sound, his com falling silent again. Nate worried about the concussion and blood loss, but there was nothing he could do about it at the moment.

“Screw fun,” Nate sighed under his breath, starting to pace again.

“What’s goin’ on?” Nana finally asked. Hardison was typing like a demon, trying to get any information he could about Eliot’s condition. The five of them were squashed into Lucille, the van hiding behind one of the buildings at the end of the block. Parker was sitting in a corner of the van with her arms tightly crossed, glaring at the mastermind while Sophie sat in one of the seats drinking tea next to Nana.

“I still ain’t got any cameras in there yet, Nana. I’m workin’ on it.”

“How you plannin’ on gettin’ that boy out, Mr. Ford?”

Nate glanced from Hardison to her, his lips pressed into a thin line. He had no idea.

* * *

“Dammit, Nate, that ain’t gonna fly,” Eliot said again, his temper starting to burn. He’d told the mastermind over and over again that too complex a caper, like the ones Nate was so fond of, was just going to trip them up too easily. After dealing with Moreau, the team was still wound tight with nerves they hadn’t had any chance to get rid of, and that meant that they weren’t exactly on the top of their games. With Hardison’s family on the line, they couldn’t risk any stupid mistakes.

“I told you, at best, there’s gonna be four teams of three guards on rotation, one Special Op with each team if they divide it right, but chances are that there’s more than four teams. Rotations every half hour gives them time to walk around each warehouse, then the next team is up.” Eliot bent over the table where the blueprints of the dockyard were laid out, his blunt fingers tracing each step as he spoke. “First team rotates to the rooftop, those go down on break. Team Two patrols while Three is getting ready and the original team is now on relief. Fresh eyes on _every round_ , man. What one doesn’t see, the next will.”

Hardison had sketched the blueprints on the whiteboard too and Nate was up there with a red marker, Eliot watching and muttering and then walking over to erase every mark the mastermind made.

“No, that’s too risky,” he said of another plan. “Parker can’t rappel down until I clear the roof, and I can’t very well get up there unseen unless you expect me to do a HALO.”

“Hay-who?” Hardison asked of no one.

“Fine, Eliot,” Nate finally sighed, tossing the marker into the air in frustration. “Just what do you suggest, then?”

Parker sat on the desk opposite them, now playing with the pen Nate had tossed. Nana looked back and forth, trying to figure out how the blonde had caught it without anyone seeing. Hardison caught her eye and just shook his head and shrugged. Eliot stalked over to the thief, snatched it from her hand and went back to the board.

“Alright. Here’s what we do….”

What Eliot outlined was a surgical strike, hitting them hard and fast and silent. He wanted to take out the soldiers on standby first, then get rid of the others in one fell swoop by luring them into an ambush, leaving the rest of the team to get Bethany out and grab the evidence that would get the drug runners shut down for good.

Nate knew that as the Triple Threat he was, Eliot was the only one who had any chance of pulling this off, if barely. He would be able to cause quite a lot of damage to the guard teams before they figured out what was going on, but even he couldn’t hold up forever. 

That was the hole in Eliot’s plan that he hadn’t put up a fuss about.

And he wished he had.

* * *

Eliot’s original plan was for him to go in at about eleven o’clock at night.

“But I thought that the optimal time for a night operation was just before dawn?” Parker said, the question obvious in her voice.

“Yeah, usually,” Eliot said as he studied the blueprints Hardison had given him. “But these are ex-Rangers. They’ll be expecting that and be most alert then.”

“What about the not-so-ex-Rangers?” Hardison asked.

Eliot shrugged. “Not really a challenge.”

“Eliot, even you can’t take on all of those guys at once,” Sophie chided in her soft accent.

“Not plannin’ to, Soph,” he said, looking up at her with a smirk tugging at his mouth. “That’s why Hardison’s gonna help me herd ‘em to the choke point. One on one is a lot easier. And a lot more fun.” He chuckled, putting her at ease for a moment.

Sophie’s delicate brows rose a little then as he grinned at her, his white teeth shining. A professional grifter and one of the best in her field, yet Eliot still managed to charm her like it was as easy for him as throwing a punch.

And it probably was. Sophie didn’t know what was in his past except for his shocking admission to being in Damien Moreau’s employ, but in any case, it had been harder than most. From what she had seen of him, his injuries, his scars, and the way he downplayed everything about himself, she’d come to the conclusion that Eliot hadn’t had an idyllic life growing up.

He spoke softly of his mother, who she gathered had had a gentling effect on her wild born son, but none at all about his father aside from a few terse facts thrown out in casual conversation. Combined with the knowledge that he left for the military at a young age and ended up with Moreau, then as one of the most feared names in the underworld brought the grifter to the conclusion that his life had been filled with pain both within and without.

Pain he never, ever revealed. At least not on purpose. She’d seen it only once, when he’d asked Parker to never ask him what he’d done for Moreau.

Every other time he was confronted, Eliot weaseled out of the conversation with a well-placed aside or took advantage of another person’s comment to turn the attention to something else. He was as skilled with evasion as it seemed he was at everything else.

Her eyes drifted over to where Alec sat with his Nana, his normal bouncing energy replaced with calm, the deep respect for the woman who’d raised him evident in his softer tones.

Alec had had the most normal and loving of childhoods of the three younger members of the team, and having met Nana, she was glad that the hacker had come into the life of a woman so loving and fiercely protective. As a result, his innocence was a refreshing change from the cynical world of grifting, and his happy rambles were so entertaining. Especially when it came to Hardison and Eliot together.

As hard as it had been for her to get back into Eliot’s good graces after what she’d done and the time she’d had to spend to make him relax around her again, it was worth it to watch the two of them go after each other. Every time Hardison went in for a ‘hug for morale’ Sophie had to bite her tongue at the look of long-suffering and embarrassment that stole over the hitter’s face. Their constant bickering, whether it be over the coms, in the offices or at a briefing, cut tension and though it sounded mean, she knew it was affectionate. Alec had even stopped bitching whenever Eliot punched him in the arm.

If Eliot was an enigma, Parker wasn’t even on the radar. The tiny thief was so full of contradictions and a strange combination of child-like innocence and harsh practicality that it made Sophie’s head spin. She treasured each time Parker came to her to ask advice. The first time had been a disaster because Sophie had no idea Parker took everything at literal face value, but she’d learned through the years to not use any euphemisms, instead choosing her words very carefully.

Parker and ‘the boys’, as she thought of them, were an odd trio. While the younger of the two were romantically involved, they didn’t even think of excluding Eliot from their adventures, sometimes even dragging the reluctant man along against his wishes. At other times, Eliot seemed to take the stance of the protective older brother, keeping the others safe and watching out for them as much as he could.

Sophie knew that if (when) she and Nate left the team, it would be Eliot who would keep the other two on even footing.

* * *

“Negative, ghost rider. Pai-kar….Pai-chew…” came another mumble from the hitter’s comm.

“Pikachu??” Hardison scrunched his face and tilted his head at the sound. “First he can’t remember Megabyte and now he’s talkin’ about _Pikachu?_ What’s he on, man?”

“Is that the little yellow one with the lightning bolt on his butt? ….What?” Parker asked as they all turned their heads to look at her questioningly.

“Yeeeaaah, Parker…. It’s got a lightning bolt on its’ butt,” Hardison sighed.

“Eliot has a concussion,” Nate said, answering Hardison’s earlier question as he turned away from the monitors. “We have to get him out of there before anything else happens. But first we have to get Bethany out. Parker?”

He looked at the blonde thief, her hand ready on the door and she nodded to him.

“Nate, the drug runners are still between us and him, and we can’t go in by the water entrance because he’s got that door shut. He pretty much decimated the bad guys, so all we gotta do is wait for the cops to show up. And that should be…..any….” the hacker said, swiveling in the chair to look at him as sirens began to sound in the distance. 

Nate rubbed his hand over his face and then through his hair, looking through the front window at the small building Eliot was trapped in before he turned back. “Parker…”

_“On it!”_ came the bright voice as the van door slammed shut in Nate’s face.

* * *

Parker was terrified. She’d been worried when Eliot had taken a beating from a tank during the Tap Out Job, and she’d been scared when all that had come over the comms during the Carnival Job was silence, but now she was terrified.

Eliot was talking, mumbling, really, but he wasn’t making one bit of sense, even to her. They’d seen a little of the fight through the camera that was positioned in the corner of the boathouse, but then Eliot had thrown someone into that wall and the camera had been knocked off its’ axis. Hardison was currently trying to get through secondary systems, poofing whatever he poofed, she had no idea. 

She laughed every time Eliot got annoyed at Alec’s explanations, twirling his finger in the air as he rolled his eyes and snarled, “Geek spiral, Hardison!!” It was funny to see how the gruff hitter could get Hardison back on track and speaking normal English again so fast.

She loved listening to the two of them bickering back and forth, but what was the best was when Hardison tried to ‘hug it out’ with Eliot. During the first few months with the new team, Eliot’s snarls and growling were real and she knew it, even though she ignored it. She’d learned that if she ignored something, most of the time it would ignore her back. Hardison hadn’t had that life lesson. She wasn’t quite sure why Eliot hadn’t strangled him out of pure frustration but she was glad he’d restrained himself; it was so much more fun with both of them still here, and now the growls were much more affectionate despite what Eliot tried to say.

Which brought her back to her terror. Eliot was the most level headed person she knew. Nate, as brilliant as he was, went off on tangents that didn’t concern her and apparently just confused the others. And Hardison and Sophie both could be distracted so easily by the newest tech or pair of shoes.

Eliot, however, was firm ground. No matter how hard she jumped on him, landed on him, or poked at him, he didn’t give way. He was sturdy, and she craved that consistency.

But now his brain was jumbled and confusing, and each word he spoke carried an undertone of something else. She knew that his past was full of things he didn’t want any of them to know, even thought they sometimes tried to guess. She was pretty sure though that from the far away and haunted look she saw in his eyes every once in a while, their best guesses were probably candy coated compared to the truth.

“Angel…”

That was a new one.

The quietly whispered word was heavy with regret, and she wondered why. It didn’t seem like anyone had heard it though, as Nate and Hardison chattered back and forth with their loud voices jangling at the back of her head. She heard the sirens before Nate did, and her head shot up. It was the distraction she’d been waiting for.

Before Nate even said a word she jumped up and out of the van again, this time heading for the boathouse.

* * *

Eliot’s plan for Hardison to herd the guards into a choke point was both simple and practical. Drug dealers weren’t known for a whole lot of detail or improvisation, so the hitter wasn’t too worried about Nate jumping from Plan H, I, or even Q and then skipping back to R just for kicks.

The blueprints showed that one of the warehouses next to the building into which Bethany had disappeared had the only access to the waterfront. It was there that he would set up his ambush. The building had nearly all he needed for his purpose: access to the speed boats that the drug runners used to transfer their goods into and out of the city, plus a solidly built boat house around the docking port.

Hardison would set off all of the alarms from that boat house to make the criminals think that a huge force was tampering with their drug runs, and since the room had only one entrance other than from the water, it was as good a place as Eliot could come up with. If all went according to plan, the dealers would panic and send all of their goons to converge on the boat house where Eliot could take them out one by one as they came through the door, and as soon as the guards were away from the main warehouse, Parker would slip in and connect their computer to Hardison’s remote access. Then on her way out, she would grab Bethany, signal to Eliot that she’d completed her task, and the hitter would use one of the cigarette boats to escape.

And go to plan it mostly did, but for the fact that the overly paranoid dealers had six teams of three, not the five that Eliot had planned on. Obviously there was something major happening, something that they hadn’t anticipated. Added to that was the fact that five of those men were SEALs and had the ability to come up on Eliot from under water within the boathouse, and take him by surprise.

Eliot had mentally kicked himself for underestimating the strength of the forces they were up against, and then he had heard Hardison mutter, “Weeeeellll, that’s not good….” 

“Dammit, Hardison!” Eliot swore. “What?!!”

“Um, well, ya know how I said there were six teams?” came the hacker’s reluctant voice.

“Yeaaahhh….?”

“Well. Um. It looks like they invited some friends.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean??” Nate snapped, his head whipping around to look at the monitor as he heard the hitter’s growl over the comm. The hacked infrared satellite showed two SUVs pulling up to the warehouse and disgorging nine more people.

“Dammit!” Eliot hissed as he saw the headlights. “There’s a deal going down!”

“Naw, naw, naw dude! Why there gotta be that tonight!??”

“Hardison, plug into the local scanners and see if there’s going to be a raid here,” Nate said suddenly, taking charge. “If there isn’t, get one!”

“Dammit, _Nate!_ No cops!! We can’t…”

The mastermind interrupted Eliot’s snarl. “Eliot, two vans just pulled up with nine people. Seven of those could be more muscle. Eighteen guards are bad enough, even through your choke point, but this makes twenty-five.”

“Goddamnedmotherf…” came the sharp voice before Hardison muted the comm for a moment, wide eyes shooting over to where Nana sat.

“Turn that radio back on, boy,” she snapped. “Ain’t nothin’ I never heard befo’, and you gotta listen to him so’s you don’t lose him!”

* * *

“….uckingsonuva _bitch!!!”_

Eliot was getting pissed. Pissed at himself, mostly, for doing pretty much what he’d accused Nate of doing: poor planning. Except while Nate’s plans were over-the-top and complicated, Eliot’s was apparently woefully underdeveloped. He had only himself to blame this time when he got the shit kicked out of him, and with what Hardison was telling him, that was about to happen pretty damned soon.

The alarms had gone off just as planned. Shift change was in mid-swing, and the alarms suddenly blaring caught them all off guard for an instant. Nate watched as the heat signatures at the newly arrived vans hesitated before six of them broke off to join the other guards.

“El, ya got six of the new guards hightailing it toward your a….butt,” Hardison informed the hitter and heard the grunted acknowledgment, his wide eyes glancing quickly over at his Nana.

Eliot had already scouted the boat house and barred every window access shut from the inside, manually closed the overhead door to the river so that no boats could bring enemies through that opening, and chose his hiding place outside, ready to bolt the second the alarms were tripped.

He counted down the seconds and lunged into the open just as the alarms blared, his movement catching the eyes of the one guard who had been paying attention. Making a zig-zag as the man shouted, Eliot paused as if confused, then took off toward the small building.

An purposeful stumble and then he was through the door, wedged partway shut by concrete blocks. He judged that unless the men were skinnier than Parker, only one would make it through the door at a time.

He slammed the door shut and jumped sideways, narrowly avoiding the gunfire that shot through the latch. The door swung open and he lunged forward, clotheslining the first man that came through. By the choking sound he heard, Eliot knew that he’d crushed the man’s larynx, but he had no more time to dwell on it.

Two was on his way through and Eliot’s fist met his face, knocking him cold. He dropped onto the floor and out of Eliot’s mind as Three came for him.

* * *

Inside the van, Nana watched, shocked, at the whirling fury that came out of the well spoken young man that she’d been introduced to. She’d been told the very basics of what Alec’s team did for people, and she hadn’t been able to match the charming southerner to being anything other than gentle until she saw him turn into this hurricane of force.

Hardison saw Nana’s eyes widen as Eliot let the fury surface and tried to see it from her eyes. The hitter had told Sophie during the Tap Out Job that he fought himself to keep the monster inside him, but the hacker knew that during his fights, Eliot loosened the leash a little. His movements now were careful as well as powerful, an economy of movement that he was going to need desperately for this fight. Hardison wasn’t sure that even Eliot would be able to take out over twenty trained men, but the plan depended on it, and he knew the hitter wouldn’t let them down.

* * *

Parker kept to the shadows as much as she could, given the chaos that she was running into. The few guards who’d remained by the SUVs were frantically loading wooden boxes into the backs of the vehicles while the Guys In Charge yelled a lot. Alarms from inside the buildings made it hard for orders to be heard clearly, and she took advantage of the confusion, darting past the few men in front of the warehouse to slip around the corner to the small side entrance that she’d pointed out to Eliot on the blueprints.

Because of Eliot and Hardison’s distractions there were fewer people around the warehouse, as nearly all of the guards had been dispatched to the boat house, but that still left two inside that Parker could play with. And by ‘play with’, meant that she could taze. She did so with glee, one right after the other, without caring that one struck his head on a wall before going down. They were part of the gang hurting Eliot, and she didn’t like them at all.

A muffled sound came from an office to her right and she crept toward the sound. Bethany sat tied to a chair, a gag over her mouth. After finding no one guarding the girl, Parker straightened up and strode toward her, slipping the memory stick into the computer as she went past.

“You’re Bethany,” she said as she flicked open her penknife. She saw the girl’s eyes widen and she scoffed. “Come on. If I wanted to have more fun I’d just taze you like the others.” Reaching behind the girl, she swiftly sliced through the ropes and backed up again in case this Bethany was not as nice as Alec and tried to hurt her or something. 

Keeping a wary eye on the young blonde, Parker sidestepped and grabbed the stick, pocketing it with a twist of her wrist. Bethany just sat there, staring.

“Well….c’mon,” Parker huffed, putting her hands on her hips in exasperation and bouncing on her toes. “I can’t rescue you if you don’t even know how to stand!”

* * *

Sixteen.

The fight was getting brutal, even to Eliot’s standards. Nine of the guards lay sprawled on the ground at his feet, and it was getting hard to maneuver around them without twisting an ankle, and they still kept coming. By this time, Eliot was sporting a split lip and an ache in his face that told him he’d have quite a shiner in a couple of days, but other than that, things weren’t going too badly just yet. He knew he would be hurting like a sonuvabitch for the next week or two and movement would be difficult with the pounding he was taking on the rest of his body, but so far he’d managed to avoid anything debilitating.

He punched another in the temple and side kicked the next in the knee, hearing the crunch as their head and knee, respectively, gave way. The second man dropped to the ground screaming, clutching at his ruined leg but the first one didn’t make a sound.

Fourteen.

The door creaked and Eliot saw the boxes he’d stacked behind it start to move as it opened a little more. Two men came through the door then, and he crouched down, grabbing two knives from ankle sheaths, letting them both fly. Both hit their targets, the right one a little off the mark, but both of the men lurched back and down, falling onto their fellows as they clutched the blades buried in their chests.

Twelve.

Another came through the door and Eliot was close enough to meet him partway, grabbing onto his jacket, and instead of pushing back, pulled him closer, using the momentum to throw the man bodily into the air and into the wall, knocking down a camera that Eliot was sure Hardison and the others were watching. He watched it drop to the ground with the unconscious man.

Eleven.

* * *

Parker dragged Bethany the last few feet to the van, the blonde struggling against the thief. 

“Stop it or your Nana will break all your fingers and feed them to you!” she hissed, making the young girl hesitate long enough for Nate to open the back door of the van and pull her inside. Parker huffed. “Finally!”

Jumping in after the girl, Parker stayed plastered to the back door, since now that there were six of them in the van, it was a whole lot more crowded than she liked. Besides, this way she could run for it when she wanted to. The only better place would be perched on the roof of the van, but Nate didn’t like it when she did that for some reason.

There was loud commotion at the front of the van that nearly made her bolt anyway, but then she caught sight of the monitor in the building Eliot was in.

He crouched as she watched, then both of his arms flew forward. Something small and silver darted from his hands and the two men fell, screaming. Another came into the building and then seemed to levitate, getting bigger until he impacted with the wall and the camera, and the feed went blank.

“Awww, hell no,” Hardison complained, his fingers flying over the keyboard.

“Where’s the camera?” Nate asked, his eyes flicking from screen to screen as if expecting multiple angles to pop up any second.

“Didn’ you see the dude Eliot threw up into the camera, Nate?” Hardison asked, one brow up and one brow down, looking like the crazy homeless man he’d played in the Three Days of the Hunter Job. “Ain’t gonna be pretty down there, all broke and fallin' apart, innards strewn on the floor like…”

“Hardison!” Sophie gasped.

“…a toolbox dumped on it’s side, what?!” he finished his tirade under her exclamation. “The camera, woman! I’s talkin’ bout the _cam-er-a!!”_

* * *

Seven.

Eliot was starting to get winded. His ribs grated against themselves from a few lucky shots, and his kidneys ached from when one of the men he’d thought were still out had managed to get up and get in a punch to his back. That man was out. Again. For good, this time.

He’d also twisted his left elbow badly, his right cheekbone was cracked and he’d lost a tooth, and he was now sporting shallow cuts all along his hands and forearms and a deeper one under his collar bone from a couple of the Rangers who’d had some knife fighting skills.

Two men stood in the doorway and hesitated; Eliot narrowed his eyes until he heard a sloshing sound and then an explosion behind him.

SHIT!!

He was thrown forward, the blast that hit him taking out the only boat that was in the dock. There went his escape route. Not wasting time on that thought, he shook his head, pressing a fist to the side of his head as nausea welled up in the pit of his stomach. Glancing behind himself, he saw the distinctive sight of four heads rising up from the water, goggles covering their eyes and camo on their faces.

Now Eliot was _really_ pissed with himself. He’d counted five Rangers in the ranks. _How had he missed the SEALs?!??_

There was no time to wonder about that as he shoved himself to his feet. He almost avoided the net that the first one tossed over him. It caught his left arm and wrapped itself around, an awkward weight he was unprepared for and he yelled with pain as it pulled at his twisted elbow. It set his balance off just enough that the knife thrown after it made contact with his side, embedding itself deeply just above Eliot’s left hip. 

Eliot snarled at the SEALs that were now coming up out of the water, their dark forms menacing in the dim light of the single bulb. Shaking off the net, he twisted and threw it over the two men behind him, gritting his teeth at the pain that shot around his belly at the movement.

He had one arm up as he turned back, blocking the overhead strike toward his head. Grabbing the SEALs right arm in his left hand, he jerked the man forward and past him, following with a hard right powerhouse to the back of his head that knocked the SEAL out cold.

“Four,” he rasped out loud, blood dripping freely from his bottom lip. He glared at the startled expressions of the other SEALs from under his sweat soaked hair.

He turned his head and spat out a mouthful of blood, then turned back and he was in motion, charging at all four of them at once as he let out a roar. The SEALs got in each other’s way trying to vie for the hitter, and two of them ended up falling back into the water again.

They were only out of the fight temporarily, so Eliot didn’t mark them off his list just yet.

The two that avoided falling back grunted loudly as the hitter tackled them, but with two against one, they managed to stay on their feet. Eliot tried to back off, having hoped that he’d be able to knock at least three of them into the water, but one of the SEALs grabbed his right arm and twisted it behind his back as the second used his abdomen for a punching bag.

He had to hand it to the water jocks; they could throw a punch.

After at least half a dozen hits, Eliot threw his head back and caught his captor off guard, his skull bashing into the SEALs nose. His grip loosened and Eliot wormed free, jamming his elbow into the man’s stomach and then pivoting and kneeing him in the face.

The SEAL went down and Eliot hunched over, arm wrapped around his middle and feeling like he was going to puke. The second man didn’t let him rest, instead charging. The hitter went down hard in the tackle, the wind knocked out of him as he landed flat on the floor. The SEALs knee caught him brutally in the groin and white hot agony shooting through his entire body, making him convulse.

* * *

“I got it!” Hardison crowed, punching the air in victory. “All I had ta do…”

“What’s happening,” Nate cut him off, leaning forward over his shoulder. The hacker, miffed, moved a little to the side to show Nate the monitor. The view was tilted crazily and Nate made a face, grunting in relief as Hardison rotated the image until he didn’t have to crane his neck. Static lines wavered in the frame occasionally, but it now showed Eliot going down as the SEAL tackled him to the floor, then kneed him.

The choked sound over the earbuds could barely even be considered a moan.

“Oh, _gawd,_ that’s gotta _hurt!”_ Hardison yelped, hunching over himself in the chair in sympathy. 

“El…” Sophie whispered, her hand going to cover her mouth as she chewed on her bottom lip.

“Holy SHIT!” Hardison straightened as he watched the feed.

“Two.”

* * *

He was only incapacitated for a few moments, bulling his way through the pain like he always did, but by that time the SEAL had his hands locked around the hitter’s throat, preventing him from gasping in even a tiny breath. Eliot’s hand scrabbled frantically at the board floor, splinters shoved into his fingertips as he sought a weapon of any kind. He grabbed something hard and swung it with all of his might at the side of the SEALs head.

Blood splattered all over Eliot’s face as the dead SEAL fell sideways. Eliot looked at his hand; he had grabbed a metal hose reel and one of the sharp edges had pierced the man’s skull. It fell to the floor with a clang as Eliot released it, then rolled over and pulled himself to his feet.

“Two,” he growled, glaring at the last two SEALs that had hauled themselves back onto the deck in front of him. 

The last remaining guards looked a little nervous facing off with a man who’d taken out twenty-three of their fellows, but as they watched the hitter sway, their confidence returned. 

Eliot swallowed as the two SEALs found their courage again, his heartbeat thundering in his ears. Blood, his own and others, dripped down the sides of his face and over his right brow, leaving streaks of red blurring his vision. 

“C’mon,” he snarled, a bloody, feral smile widening on his face as he beckoned to the last two. They figured he was bluffing so they charged and found out how wrong they were.

It took a lot longer for Eliot to take out the last two than it normally did; his body was wracked with pain that jabbed into him each time he moved and his adrenalin was starting to fade. The voices of the others coming through the coms had long ago been relegated to the back of his mind, but now that his concentration was going to hell along with his balance and everything else, they were distracting him, making him twitch at just the wrong moment.

One of the SEALs had had a knife and the other brass knuckles, and between the two Eliot now had four broken ribs and the knife was buried in the back of his right thigh. Howling with frustration, anger and pain, Eliot swung out with his good arm, a powerful roundhouse punch knocking the brass knuckled SEAL back into the water where he didn’t resurface.

_“One!”_ Eliot roared, his eyes wild. The last SEAL, weaponless with his knife still lodged in the hitter’s leg, ducked down and grabbed an iron headed mallet and charged at Eliot. His attack was sloppy but he managed to smash the hammer into the side of Eliot’s head.

Agony slammed through Eliot’s skull again, but before surrendering to the darkness, Eliot wrapped a powerful arm around the man’s throat and squeezed, dropping to the floor only seconds after the unconscious SEAL.

He held onto consciousness by a thread, using Nate’s steady voice as an anchor. Hearing the words, ‘Hang in there, we’re going to get you out of there,’ gave him the little bit of strength he needed to keep from floating away completely.

* * *

“Dear Lord,” Nana breathed when she and the others saw Eliot finally fall. The atmosphere of worry for the hitter was palpable in the van as she sat on the furthest bench seat, Bethany huddled beside her, shaking. 

“Parker, he’s down,” Nate said into the com. His voice was calm for the moment, but he knew he would probably break down later. After. “Eliot’s _down,”_ he repeated.

“Got it,” came the thief’s quiet whisper. “The door’s open. I’m going in.”

Nate bit his lip, knowing that the scene inside the boathouse was one that he’d rather Parker didn’t see, but right now she was the only one in position to get to Eliot. He watched as she peered into the small building, bodies of groaning and slowly shifting men piled almost to her thighs. Her eyes grew wide as she glanced down at them, but then her gaze moved and shock and horror replaced the puzzlement just a moment before she moved, climbing over and shoving them to the side to get to the hitter. 

* * *

Parker knew that there were going to be a lot of men down but she had no idea until she pulled open the door just how many there were going to be. Her eyes went wide at the bodies stacked up like cordwood. They were mostly all still breathing though, as far as she could tell.

Looking up, she saw Eliot on the ground by the dock, partially on his side, his head turned away from her. A pool of blood had formed under his body and she started toward him. She pushed a couple of the men out of her way and then just gave up on moving them, climbing over them quickly before rushing to the fallen hitter.

“Oh, Sparky,” she whispered as she knelt beside him. “Nate, he needs a hospital,” she said, not knowing where she could touch him without hurting him even more. Her knees were wet where his blood was soaking through her jeans from the two stab wounds, multiple cuts and the gash on his head. 

Eliot groaned and his eyes blinked open a little. “No….hospital,” he mumbled, ignoring the flood of arguments in the earbud. “Dammit….Nate….I said _no.”_

Turning his eyes up to Parker, he asked, “How well can you swim?”

Her head tilted.

“Look in their vests,” he panted, pointing to the unconscious SEALs. “Look for….package…called QuikClot. And pressure….bandages ‘n… ’n duct tape.” His eyes were closed as he spoke, his energy starting to fade. He heard rustling and Parker’s mutters as she searched, probably shoving the SEALs bodies a little more forcefully than necessary from the sounds.

“Got it,” she said, her voice closer now.

“Okay. Now…” He outlined what he wanted her and Hardison to do in halting speech, his breathing harsh and shallow. 

“On it,” Hardison’s voice came from the comms as he followed his instructions from the hitter. “Okay, got a reply already, damn… These guys sit on their phones? Oh-two hundred.”

“Hour…an’ a half…. Uuuuh. ‘Mmmmight pass out….” he whispered. “Can ya…can ya handle this?”

“Yeah, I can do it, Sparky,” she said, her tone surprisingly subdued.

Eliot nodded sharply and set his teeth as she ripped open the sealed packet of QuikClot. He hated the stuff with a passion. It did well to stop bleeding, but the powder hurt like hell when it was applied. 

He felt her lifting up his shirt and then fire raced across his abdomen as she poured it into the stab wound just above his hip. His back arched and he fisted his hands, but otherwise didn’t move. She gave him a moment to recover as she wrapped a bandage around his waist then covered it with the duct tape, then she rolled him onto his side so that she could get at the knife wound in the back of his thigh.

He barked out a yell as the QuikClot was applied to his leg, dimly hearing the others asking what was going on. Parker snapped a reply as she wrapped his leg tightly, her voice angry and tight as he faded in and out of consciousness.

A sound of tape pulling again made him wake up a bit, and he groaned as she wrapped the duct tape over the bandages she’d just put on. With their next move, he would need the extra protection.

Hands gripped him under his arms and then pulled at him, tugging him over the dock toward the edge of the water. He heard a splash near his head and he opened dull eyes to see Parker’s head floating right in front of his face. Managing to roll over onto his side, he helped her as much as he could to lever himself into the water.

“Uuunhhhh…..” he moaned as he floated in the water, snugged tightly into Parker’s shoulder as she started to swim.

“What!?” she yelped, stopping her movements a little. “Are you okay? What did I do??”

“Noth’n..” he managed. “Feels…..good…”

Parker peeked at Eliot’s face and saw that it was relaxed for the first time since the night began and she allowed her heart to slow down. Apparently the weightlessness was easing the hitter’s pain.

“Okay, Sparky,” she said as she reached the dock door. “Gotta hold your breath now.”

“ ‘kay…” She felt him nod against her shoulder and she took a breath, diving under the door and pulling Eliot with her.

* * *

Compared to the last hours he’d suffered through, the swim Parker was taking him on was bliss. He held his breath as instructed while she dived under the door and then took a couple of shallow breaths when they resurfaced. 

The earbuds were relatively quiet now, with Parker giving soft updates on where they were in the water and Hardison giving her course corrections, so Eliot was able to relax. While he didn’t let his guard down all the way, he knew that Parker had his back right now and he could let himself float freely, his hands rising slightly to the surface as she pulled him along.

It wasn’t easy to make himself relax though, even now. His brain fought against decades full of ingrained lessons of pain and betrayal when he was relaxed, and he had built up unimaginable walls to keep people at arm’s length or further. But somehow in the last three years he’d come to trust his team, however much his instincts screamed at him to do otherwise.

Hardison had been the first one he’d let himself banter with, almost from the start. Ever since the hacker had smacked his head into the frame of the cop car, he’d treated the younger man as the annoying brother he’d never had. It was just so easy and so much fun for the hitter to rile Hardison up, and the retorts back and forth were never anything but playful.

Parker was the next. As ten pounds of crazy as she was, she was all heart and innocence, and had proven over and over that she thought of Eliot as someone who would never hurt her and was therefore safe. That confused him; he had no idea why she saw _him,_ Moreau’s pitbull, as _safe_ , but he treasured her opinion and vowed to keep her as safe as he could.

Now though, she was the one saving him, and as much as that grated on his nerves, it made him feel a little less of the monster he knew himself to be and a little more worthy of his place on the team. He could never make up for the innocent blood he’d spilled in his past, but each time they smiled at him he knew they understood that he was trying.

* * *

It took all four of them to lift the waterlogged hitter into the van, laying him down on the floor. Sophie and Nana had piled up most of the blankets on the floor as well as all of the pillows Hardison had stashed in the van, making a soft nest for Eliot. Both women had towels that they used to carefully dry as much of him as they could, which wasn’t much. Parker pulled off his boots and socks and wrapped a towel around his feet and another around herself, then they covered him with the remaining blankets as the thief curled around his feet.

Nate had taken the wheel, first driving Lucille to the shore where Parker had come up, and now pulling carefully onto the frontage road before merging into interstate traffic. He finally took a breath as they left the flashing lights of the warehouse raid behind them.

For his part, Eliot rested. The women fussed with drying his hair and trying to daub water from his skin and clothes, but he wasn’t cold. Being the end of summer, the dip in the river had been warm enough and there’d been no wind. He listened to Hardison chatter on with Nana and the rest, the conversation quiet, he suspected, for his sake. The road hummed under his back and he let it lull him into a light doze again.

* * *

Nate looked in the rearview mirror over and over, worried that the hitter had yet to move on his own or make a sound. He was pretty sure Eliot was conscious, but he had no idea why the man was being so uncharacteristically subdued. His only guess was that the hitter didn’t want anyone to make any more of a fuss over him than they already were, and he didn’t want to upset Nana by being his usual asshole self when hurt.

This would be the first time that the team would be close to Eliot as he recuperated, unless he pulled one of his disappearing acts again. He was notorious for slipping away when hurt to lick his wounds in private, only to return the next day all patched up and belligerent and somehow ready for the next job.

Nate realized with a start that he’d been taking advantage of Eliot’s need to protect the team, without even bothering to see the toll it was taking on the younger man. Eliot never complained, at least not refusing any jobs with the excuse of being hurt; in fact, looking back Nate was pretty sure that the hitter had been accruing injuries on top of injuries and keeping silent about it. That, combined with the unusual request Eliot had made before they had gotten side-tracked with this case, made the Mastermind resolve again to have the entire team take a minimum of a month off.

* * *

Nate and the rest had barely settled Eliot into the back bedroom when a knock sounded on the door, then the knob rattled. An annoyed voice sounded outside the door.

“…the hell’s it locked for, Kev?” The first one was that of a young man. The one that followed was a little deeper.

“I don’t know, dumbass. He usually leaves it unlocked. Look for a key- _Yello!”_ the voice finished as the door opened up. Sophie arched her brows at the two men that stood there, both tall and muscular. The younger one looked like a beach bum with wide puppy dog eyes, his sandy blonde hair held back by a pair of Ray-bans and wearing a loud pair of board shorts. The one who’d been speaking was taller and a little darker, with dark hair, wearing a little more somber of wardrobe and expression. A red duffle bag was slung over each of their shoulders.

“Hi. Is Wolf here?” the tall one asked.

“Wol… Oh, you mean Eliot?” Sophie asked, remembering the codes that the hitter had instructed Hardison to enter into the text message.

“Yes, ma’am. We got a 911 from him?”

“You must be Kevin and Johnny,” she said, stepping back and ushering them into the apartment, closing the door quickly behind them. “Eliot told us to expect you. This way.”

She led the two to the room in the back and opened the door to see Eliot’s eyes open, barely. “ ‘Bout time,” he growled in a weak voice.

“Shut up, asshole,” The younger one cracked, grinning.

“What J means is that you really gotta stop callin’ us, Eliot.” Kevin sighed. “And stop using your face for a punching bag, you moron.”

“But then I’d miss your witty repartee,” the hitter drawled slowly, waking up a little. “Just get to work.” The bantering back and forth made Sophie’s brows rise again as she listened to Eliot.

“Nag, nag, nag…” Johnny laughed as they set the duffles down and started to pull out their medical equipment.

Sophie and the rest of the team was banned from the bedroom then by three firm voices, and relegated to waiting in the living room while the two men took care of Eliot’s wounds. They heard faint growls, a few moans and some soft discussion between the men, but other than that, the room was mostly quiet.

When the two finally came out, they announced that Eliot was resting since they’d had to ‘sedate his stubborn ass’, and told the waiting team plus Nana and Bethany that he was pretty banged up and out of it, but he’d live.

In the hours that followed, they learned that Kevin and Johnny were Marine medics that Eliot had met years ago, but neither one would say how, where, or even exactly when. Nate suspected that they knew Hardison would be able to hack into military databases and find out the backstory if they gave up too many details, and he could see the curiosity on the hacker’s face along with the frustration when his questions were deflected, either subtly or directly. 

Apparently the two EMTs had come to Boston before to patch Eliot up after the Tap Out job and a few others. Eliot had given them access to one of his accounts so they could get supplies and charter last minute plane rides, but again, they wouldn’t tell anyone from where, just that they would be able to get to Eliot quickly if needed, usually within a couple of hours.

* * *

Kevin came out of the bedroom after a behind closed doors growling session and motioned to Nate. “He’s awake and cranky,” the medic said as Nate came closer. “The QuikClot probably saved his life; he lost quite a bit of blood. That and the duct tape. Thank God those SEALs had their vests supplied. Some guys can get sloppy sometimes if they’re not active.” 

“What about the rest?” Nate asked. “Ribs? Concussion?”

Kevin nodded. “He’s got three broken ribs and three more cracked so we wrapped his chest so he can breathe easily. Take the wrap off in a couple of days, and make sure he does some deep breathing exercises—he knows the ones. Right cheekbone is fractured and he’s lost a molar on that side; nothing to do about the fracture except ice to keep the swelling down, and he’s gonna have to make an appointment with a dentist for that tooth. We stitched up the cuts from the knives, he’s got a couple under his collar bone as well as the one in his side and in the back of his thigh. Just keep them clean and change the dressings every day. If anything looks infected, or he runs a fever over 103 for more than two days, or if he starts not making sense, call us.”

“Wait, you’re leaving?” Nate asked, surprised. 

“Yeah, he knows how to take care of himself from here,” the EMT said. “We’ve given him a few units of blood and topped him off with fluids, so just keep an eye on him and try to keep him in bed as long as you can.”

“Sparky’s not going to like that.”

Kevin jumped and whipped around. _“Shit!_ I mean, damn, Eliot said you were sneaky, but…”

“He told you about me?” Parker asked, tilting her head and giving Kevin a narrow-eyed look.

“Uuuuuhhh.”

“Why don’t you go tell the others that we can go see Eliot, huh?” Nate asked, and received a grateful look from the EMT when Parker squealed and clapped her hands, then bounced off.

“She’s….um,”

“Yeah, we know,” Nate smiled and shrugged. “That’s Parker.”

* * *

The very next day Eliot was arguing with Nate about leaving. “Dammit, Nate, I’ve been cooped up here long enough,” he growled.

“And if not here, you’d be cooped up at your apartment or somewhere else, alone,” Nate countered.

“And what’s wrong with that?”

“Eliot.” His name spoken in that tone made him leery, narrowing his eyes at the mastermind.

“I know that I’ve been taking advantage of you lately.”

Now he was confused. “What?”

“Just…let me talk,” Nate said, holding up his hand. Reluctantly, Eliot sat back and waited. That was Nate’s ‘I’m going to monologue now and you’re going to listen’ voice.

“Eliot, we’ve… _I’ve_ … been taking advantage of you,” Nate repeated, his tone a little softer. “I’ve been taking job after job without thinking about what it’s doing to you. You’re the best hitter there is, but I can’t keep throwing you into such difficult fights over and over like I’ve been doing.”

That made Eliot raise his brows; that Nate saw through his defenses shouldn’t have surprised him, but he was a little embarrassed.

“No, Nate, you should be taking the jobs,” he said, shaking his head a little. The concussion had left him a little dizzy at times so he moved slowly. “You know that they’re important.”

“Not as important as you are. We can’t do our jobs if you aren’t here, and face it, I’ve been ignoring the fact that you need time off just like the rest of us, if not more. Yes, Hardison pulls all-nighters and sometimes Parker gets a little banged up in a vent, but _you’re_ the one who does all the hard work, and I want you to know that I see it, and I appreciate it. So now, I’m going to tell everyone that there won’t be any jobs for at least two months.”

Relief flooded through the hitter even though his masks didn’t slip. Two whole months to recuperate meant that he wouldn’t have to rush to get back onto his feet. It meant that he didn’t have to force himself back into the gym before he felt ready, he didn’t have to push to make himself lift more, punch harder, dodge faster. Maybe even some of the deeper, more stubborn hurts would finally have enough time to settle.

“What about our clients?” he asked. He knew that there had been a couple of possibilities on the books.

“They’ll wait. I’ve already spoken to them. There’s nothing life or death waiting for us,” Nate assured the hitter. “And I want… I need you to take some time for yourself, Eliot. I know that what happened in the warehouse… It was more than hard for you, and I hate that I asked you to do that.”

Eliot’s jaw clenched and his eyes shifted to the side; he hadn’t wanted to think about that just yet.

“ ’S part of the job, Nate,” he rasped. “It’s part ‘a who I am.”

“It _was,”_ the older man countered. “And I had no right to make it part of you again. I’m sorry.”

Eliot didn’t respond that time and Nate saw the emotions rolling behind the blue eyes. He stood and walked to the door. “I’ll leave you alone. But I’m not going to let you leave. We all need to make sure you’re okay. So please, don’t go.”

Nate shut the door and Eliot sat there, unmoving, for a long time.

* * *

Nate had used the same words on him that he’d used on Parker. ‘So please, don’t’, or as near enough like it and in the same tone that it didn’t matter. Eliot knew that the team cared about him, at least a little; that they hadn’t thrown him to the wolves the moment he’d told them about Moreau was proof. And the fact that they had been able to actually take him down rattled the hitter’s view of his world.

Damien Moreau had been so sly, so cunning, when he’d first taken Eliot in as a young, naive, and disenchanted soldier who had been disavowed by his military and left on his own. He’d barely survived his last mission intact, the rest of his team murdered. He’d been forced to hole up in a little mountain village to recover because Uncle Sam wouldn’t come for him, wouldn’t even acknowledge him.

Oh, he’d known it would happen sooner or later, but the knowledge and the reality were two very different things. He’d had to cope with his physical limitations as well as the sense of abandonment and betrayal in that village, watched over by an old, old woman that the rest of the villagers were terrified of and didn’t dare draw her wrath by talking ill of the man in her care, however foreign he was.

When he’d finally recovered after months of struggle, he’d walked down the mountain with just the clothes on his back and the chip on his shoulder, wanting nothing more than destruction. He didn’t care whose.

Moreau had seen the fury and given him that, and more. Not only the ability to let the monster off of it’s leash, but the money and weapons to use it to its’ deadliest. Eliot had been so far down that bad road that he’d been blind to what he was doing and didn’t even question it.

It was those thoughts that followed him down into slumber and distorted his dreams into nightmares.

* * *

It was three o’clock in the morning and Hardison, as usual, was the only one awake. Nate and Sophie had headed upstairs around ten, and Parker disappeared around midnight. They had set up the second bedroom upstairs for Nana and Bethany, who had called it an early night at nine in order to go back home early the next day, so the hacker was the only one up and about. He didn’t mind, it gave him time to explore the newest expansion pack in his World of Warcraft.

So the grunts and rough exhalations from the downstairs bedroom went unnoticed for the first hour as Hardison leveled up his characters.

Taking a moment to stretch the kinks out of his back and pondering a soda, he took off his headphones and heard a growl from the bedroom. For a moment he thought it was in the game and he glanced down, but then it came again from behind him. Standing, he walked over to the bedroom door, limping slightly and shaking out the left foot that had decided to go to sleep on him.

Mutterings and sounds he hadn’t heard before, whines and soft cries, came from the hitter’s room. Biting his lower lip, Hardison pushed the door open to see Eliot tossing on the bed, sweat dripping down his temple and into his wet curls. The hacker’s brows drew together as he watched Eliot’s face draw into a frightened frown.

Making his decision, Hardison walked to the side of the bed, not trying to be stealthy because he _knew_ he’d get punched if he did that. “Eliot,” he spoke as he drew closer. “Hey, El, man…wake up.”

Eliot went from dead asleep to wide awake in a fraction of a second, bolting upright with wide eyes and fists up in front of himself.

“Hey, hey, Sparky….” he soothed, using Parker’s pet name for him in the hopes that it would calm the other man down. “It’s just me, I ain’t gonna hurt ya,” he said, raising his own hands.

Hardison watched as recognition slowly flowed into blue eyes, followed by agony. He rushed forward, catching Eliot in his arms before he fell over, surprised that the man allowed him so close after being so badly hurt. Easing the hitter back down, he winced inwardly at the moan that caught in Eliot’s throat and saw the expression of pain on his face.

“Easy, man,” Hardison crooned, gently sliding his hands from behind Eliot’s back. “Sorry I startled ya. Think you were havin’ a nightmare.”

Eliot’s eyes opened and he gave a short nod. “Yeah,” he rasped harshly, looking away. “Shit. I’m sorry…I woke ya.”

“Nah, I wasn’t sleepin’,”

“Why’m I not surprised.”

“Hey now, just ‘cause I ain’t a morning bird like the rest’a you assholes,” Hardison jibed, trying to lighten the mood, but Eliot was apparently stuck in a funk.

“I’m sorry,” the hitter said.

“Yeah, we established that already.”

“No. I mean. I mean about Moreau. The pool. Everything.”

Hardison’s brows rose and he tilted his head, then narrowed his eyes. This was not what he’d expected to hear right now. In fact, probably not ever. _Eliot apologizing? About Moreau?_

“Yeah. ‘Bout that,” Hardison said, his mood darkening a bit as he crossed his arms over his chest, a very Eliot move. “You wanna explain?”

Eliot’s gaze, having previously drawn stubbornly to the far wall, moved to the hacker. “I,” he started. “I can try.”

“You do that.” The tall man drew up a chair from the end of the bed to the side and folded his lanky frame into it, prepared to wait all night. 

He’d been ticked off about the pool. No, not ticked off, infuriated. Moreau was an evil man, but Hardison had thought that he and the hitter were friends. Not just friends, but maybe even best friends. God knew, Hardison didn’t have any of those. Online orcs and elves just didn’t count. And when he’d been kicked into the pool and found out that Eliot had just stood there made him feel betrayed on many different levels.

“I was in a bad place when I went to work for D… for Moreau,” Eliot started slowly, fingers drawing the sheets closer. “I’d just, um, _left_ the military on what I guess you could say was bad terms. Moreau found me wandering in Azerbaijan. Offered me a job.” 

Eliot had to pause there, panting softly as he caught his breath again before continuing. “I could tell by the reactions of the local population that it wasn’t exactly above board, but at that point I was pretty pissed off at the world and would have been Satan’s right hand himself if he’d offered.” The hitter looked away again. “Then again, maybe he had.”

“Yeah,” Hardison snapped unhappily into the silence that followed, “Satan….Moreau… pretty much one and the same.”

Eliot’s jaw clenched and his hands balled into fists as he tried to tamp down the panic that was roiling through him. When he could speak without his voice shaking again, he continued.

“I never lied to you guys, Hardison. I told you right at the beginning that I hurt people. But…it was more than just hurting people for Moreau. It was teaching them ‘lessons’, making examples of them, and they didn’t all deserve it. For a while there, I didn’t care. But eventually I started to realize what was happening.”

The hitter had to stop and catch his breath again and he realized his shoulders were shaking; his emotions always went all over the place when it came to Moreau. Sometimes even just thinking about the man made Eliot want to curl up with his back to a corner and a knife in his hand. 

“I don’t exactly know why Damien let me go, but he did.” His voice was harsh and determined. “But the one thing I do know about him is that he is a predator, and the _last_ thing you do in front of a predator is show any sort of weakness.” 

Eliot risked making eye contact again. “Because if you do, if _I_ had, he would have attacked. He would have killed me, but he would have tortured you and killed you first and made me watch before taking me apart inch by inch.”

He gave that a few moments to soak in. “I couldn’t risk it, Hardison. I couldn’t risk _you._ I could handle anything Moreau decided to do to me but not to you; I can’t handle…losing you. Any of you.”

Hardison was taken aback at those words. To think that Eliot cared for him as a friend and now to _know_ that Eliot felt such a strong connection to them was surprising, to say the least.

“I’m so sorry, Hardison,” Eliot was saying, and the hacker booted his brain back online. “I shouldn’t have let you come with me to that meeting. I should’ve told Nate earlier to back off, no matter what, shouldn’t have let any of you guys near the man.”

“Hey,” Hardison’s words were softer now. He never could hold a grudge. “It ain’t your fault, El. None of it. Yeah, maybe we all could’a done things differently, but the point is that he’s locked up and he ain’t gonna get out any time soon.”

“We hope.”

“We _know,”_ Hardison countered. “Man, I got so many ‘bots and programs watchin’ him and San Lorenzo that I’ll have a spreadsheet and itemized deductions for the Kleenex every time he so much as _sneezes_ , man.”

The look in Eliot’s eyes was so forlorn that Hardison scooted a little closer in the chair, reaching out to take the hitter’s hand. He was again surprised when Eliot didn’t pull away. “El, man,” he said. “I get it. I do. I mean, I was a lil’ pissed for a while there, I ain’t gonna lie. But I get that you’re all….tangled up when it comes to Moreau. I don’ know what he did to ya that makes you so scared…”

He had to pause as Eliot scoffed and turned his head away. “Don’ hide from me, now, El. I may be just a geek, but even a geek can tell when a friend is scared, and I want you to know I got your back.”

Eliot’s head turned back slowly, warily, as he eyed the hacker. He had no idea what he’d done to deserve Hardison and Nate’s loyalty, even after he’d betrayed them all so badly. He’d conned his crew, even after telling Sophie off when she had done it, and all he could see of himself was the hypocrite.

“You don’t know…” he started reluctantly, but was cut off.

“You’re right, I don’t know. But I don’t need to.” Hardison sighed and ran a hand down his face as he squeezed Eliot’s with the other. “We all got demons. You got a lot of ‘em. But you don’ need to feel like you gotta explain everything, okay? You got the experience and we jes’ gotta try t’remember that and follow your advice.”

Eliot’s eyebrow rose.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. ‘Dammit, Hardison’, right?”

“No,” Eliot squeezed his hand. “Thanks.”

Hardison grinned and let go, holding out his hand sideways. They did a gentler version of their ‘slap, slap, fistbump’ and the corner of Eliot’s mouth finally quirked up in what was a huge smile for the hitter.

“Yeah. You get some sleep, man.” The tall man stood up. “I’ll be back with some Battlestar Galactica that you have just got to see.”

Hardison laughed as Eliot’s groan followed him out.

**Author's Note:**

> (These are all from Wikipedia, so take them with a salt shaker.)
> 
> BFR: Bum Fucking Rock. A geographical reference point in tactical radio communication  
> Klick: kilometer  
> Triple Threat: in the military, a Triple Threat is a soldier who is Special Forces, Ranger and Airborne trained.  
> FIDO: Fuck It, Drive On  
> HALO: Airplane Drop—High Altitude, Low Opening  
> Pai-kar, Pai-chew: sick and crippled


End file.
